If after installing BIOS version N3CN42WW on your Lenovo Legion Go, you have found it unable to get past the BIOS or entirely bricked, Lenovo says it's not your fault. The good news is that you will likely be able to get it fixed for free.

Taking to the Lenovo forums (via VideoCardz), Lenovo clarified that it was able to replicate the same bricking problem with three devices, while other Lenovo teams were able to update to N3CN42WW without any problems. They say, "as such the issue is most likely related to [a] specific component used on mainboards in a certain batch or batches, or the issue needs to have specific circumstances to manifest."

As part of this, the employee also states that "while the root cause has not been identified yet, it is clear it is not user error."

Finally, Lenovo confirms that those under warranty should aim to get the device fixed or replaced and "in the case of out-of-warranty devices, it should be repaired free of charge, but please check local laws."

The user the Lenovo employee was replying to is based in the European Union, and Lenovo clarifies that those in the EU will be covered even if not under warranty if the BIOS update caused the problem.

One user has replied to this post stating that they were told their Legion Go couldn't be repaired in Belgium as they were out of warranty, so one can only hope that the support team are made aware of this communication from Lenovo.

This clarity has been expected by the Lenovo community for some time, who have been reporting bricking problems with this specific BIOS version for a while now. They were likely hoping for some sort of communication weeks ago when it first popped up, even if it were Lenovo simply acknowledging it has seen the problem. Version N3CN42WW appeared to have been released in June and was removed at the start of August, with no communication from Lenovo at the time. That means users were left in the dark for potentially weeks with a handheld that would simply not boot.

On August 4, a post went up on the Legion Go Subreddit, warning users not to update their BIOS. The comments section for this post has multiple users claiming their devices were also bricked by the update. At the time, one user reported they were given a price of €237 (about $273) from Lenovo to fix it. It has not been made clear if any users who paid the repair fee have gotten their fee back with this new communication from Lenovo.

Though it has not been possible to download the BIOS update via Lenovo for a few weeks now, users on Reddit were still cautious of updates even this week (though admittedly, part of that seems to be users taking the opportunity to jokingly take a swipe at Lenovo).

Now, if you try to update your Lenovo Legion Go BIOS, you will find version N3CN40WW, which was updated on August 5 this year, but it hasn't been made clear what the difference is between this and the same version number which launched on January 6 this year. Still, even if users will be getting their devices fixed, this period of uncertainty has likely taken some of the shine off the device for some. And with the memory crisis in full swing, buying a new device is simply unfeasible for many.

Nvidia's new DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction feature is laser-focused on trying to fix the second most annoying thing about ray traced or path traced games: visual artifacting. Yes, the lighting effect does deliver the most accurate-looking lighting and shadows in games, but in motion there is a definite visual weirdness added into scenes. And that weirdness generally comes from the denoising pass designed to turn the low-fidelity path traced image, with its limited number of rays, into a fully realised frame.

Leave a game's viewport still and the scene will pretty rapidly come together to make a sharp, convincing image. Shift that around, or have that scene filled with moving objects or characters and you're going to see the sort of visual trails you might only have been used to in the warehouse parties of your early twenties. Just me?

The issue is that it's way too expensive in terms of raw compute to trace every single photon/pixel that would otherwise make up a fully traced scene. Even with the current method of tracking a far smaller representative sample of rays bouncing around the geometry of your game world it's still incredibly demanding of your PC's hardware.

This is, by the way, the most annoying thing about ray traced or path traced games: the amount of graphical horsepower the tech demands over pre-baked lighting techniques. The huge performance hit it involves is punitive for all but the most powerful GPUs, and we are still no closer to solving that right now.

So we still have to use small numbers of tracked rays to create an approximate scene which looks something like this:

But that doesn't look great if you're trying to make a convincing world, though I guess there's something to that aesthetic in a sort of 3D ASCII kind of way. Anyway, to realise this image into a production ready frame you need to use a denoiser to fill in the blanks between the sampled rays, and the hand-tuned denoisers track and group pixels across multiple frames, to give them access to more samples. They then use these neighbouring pixels to interpolate and blend the scene together.

As I said, that's fine for a static image, but those pixels don't stay representative for long and in motion they break down, adding in artifacting to a scene and smearing detail away from textures. This is where the original Ray Reconstruction feature came in, replacing the hand-tuned denoisers with an AI-based denoiser working alongside Nvidia's upscaling models, to generate more accurate pixels in between those sampled rays.

And now we're finally getting an updated version of Ray Reconstruction which uses the sharper second-gen Transformer model initially brought into DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution back in January.

And it's about time, because for ray or path traced games, even if you were using the improved transformer model of DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction was still using the old model, leaving you those tell-tale artifacts.

Nvidia is touting four main improvements with DLSS 4.5 RR:

• Efficient Denoiser: The new model delivers 35% more compute capability, and processes 20% more parameters, while maintaining similar performance to the previous model.
• Enhanced Super Resolution: Building upon the advances from DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution, the model has deeper spatial awareness across every scene, and more intelligently uses game engine pixel sampling and motion data. The result is improved lighting accuracy, better temporal stability and clearer motion in ray-traced and path-traced content.
• Expanded Training Dataset: Trained on a larger dataset, the new model is even better at image reconstruction. This intelligence gives the model even better awareness to pick the most accurate engine data to reconstruct scenes closer to ground truth.
• Finer Developer Control: The new model provides developers with finer control for temporal accumulation, providing precise tuning of model response for even better image quality.

The new version of the feature is releasing today, and jamming the second-gen transformer model into supported games is done via the Nvidia App rather than from inside your games' settings screens. You just need to select a title from within the Nvidia App itself, navigate to the 'DLSS Override - Model Presets' entry and select 'Preset F' from the 'Ray Reconstruction' dropdown menu. Apply it and you should be set.

While complete image fidelity across all ray or path traced games is by no means a 100% solved problem, it's clear that DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction is able to deliver a more stable image when it's in use. And it's not just about giving you a more stable image with less 'boiling' textures and trails, either, it's adding back in more detail to a scene that would have otherwise been lost.

You can see that especially in the below video for Resident Evil Requiem's opening scene. The textures on the white car at the beginning are still shimmering behind the rain effects using the older model, but are almost entirely stable with DLSS 4.5 RR enabled. But it's the extra detail on the ground that highlights what the new second-gen transformer model is capable of here.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction on left, DLSS Ray Reconstruction on the right

Of course we're going to highlight what it looks like in Nvidia's poster child for all things DLSS: Cyberpunk 2077. In the two videos below you can see where that extra temporal stability really makes a difference. In this first video, inside a store, you can see the striping on the ground as the viewport shifts, which is completely absent from the improved DLSS 4.5 RR version.

You might have to watch it loop through a couple of times to see what I mean, but if you focus on the older version on the right you will see, when the view moves to the floor, that there is an after image of essentially the edge of the screen imprinted on the floor. This fades quickly, but is noticeable.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction on left, DLSS Ray Reconstruction on the right

Outside, looking up at the ceiling of this underpass you can see where the textures resolve far, far quicker than before. The different areas of the ceiling using the previous version of RR almost seem like they can't make up their mind what they should look like, while DLSS 4.5 RR comes in with far more certainty.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction on left, DLSS Ray Reconstruction on the right

My final example comes from Alan Wake 2 and its own heavy use of path tracing and the denoising steps that are vital to the game's fidelity. To be honest, the strange artifcating of Alan Wake 2 almost gets a pass from me, because the dreamlike trails around people kinda add to the weirdness of the game. But it's not meant to look like that.

You can see from the dancing man in the Elderwood Palace Lodge bar that those trails are almost entirely gone from the latest version of Ray Reconstruction. But, notably, they are not completely resolved. There is still some level of artifacting around his feet as he shuffles around the wooden floor.

Though it is worth noting here you can also see the enhanced level of detail the second-gen transformer is adding back in. If you look to the wooden floor in the room behind the dancing dude you will see the planks are more clearly represented.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction on left, DLSS Ray Reconstruction on the right

So yes, there is still some work to be done before we can say that path tracing visuals have been perfected, but this is still a worthy upgrade. And honestly, we probably need a mixture of both improved AI modelling and more powerful hardware to be able to add more traced light bounces into a frame. But in these tech-starved times of ours, hoping for more horsepower when the datacentres want to jealously hoard all the compute for themselves is a fool's game.

But DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction is a definite improvement over Nvidia's previous versions. Sure, a lot of the improvements are only really telling when you're specifically looking for them, but equally some of that smearing and the 'boiling' textures are absolutely things I can do without.

Ray Reconstruction also remains RTX agnostic in that it will function across all generations of GeForce RTX GPUs, and isn't really any more draining upon your PC's resources than the previous version. Though, as a whole, it remains true the transformer-based DLSS features weigh more heavily upon your system's performance on older generations of RTX hardware than the RTX 50-series.

But I would say that's less of an issue for Ray Reconstruction than Super Resolution. One is for helping resolve high-end path tracing where a massive performance hit is expected, and the other is specifically designed to get you more performance. You're only really going to want to be doing heavy path traced gaming on high-end cards of the Ada and RTX Blackwell generations, whereas Turing and Ampere GPUs could do with all the help they can get.

Did you know there are two different holograms on old boxes of Windows 95? I didn't. Did you know one of them has a child with no top pointing at Microsoft on a monitor, which a government complained about and got changed? I also did not know that.

Yet now I do, thanks to a blog from Microsoft's Raymond Chen. The anti-piracy holograms were a way of assuring the buyer of a copy of Windows 95 that the product was legitimate. They're incredibly hard to fake, or just cost too much to produce, so even if one could successfully mimic the look of a Windows 95 box, they couldn't mimic the hologram.

The original hologram design had a baby sitting, which, when you moved the box, would show the child pointing and looking at the PC. In it, the baby had no top on.

Harking back to a separate blog post they wrote back in 2003, Chen claims a government (which "shall remain nameless for obvious reasons") saw that baby with no top, and while the hologram cuts off below the waist, assumed it to be entirely naked anyway. Microsoft then had to swiftly put out a second box with a fresh anti-piracy hologram, this time giving the baby a shirt and overalls.

As this was rushed to production, the second fully clothed hologram did not point at the Microsoft logo on the monitor. If you're wondering why Chen wrote this blog post now, over 20 years later, it's because a user posted a YouTube short of the original half-clothed baby hologram, which has seemingly become quite rare.

In 2003, Chen lamented that Windows "brings out the Rorschach test in everyone" and said: "If the baby in your hologram isn’t wearing a shirt, you have a genuine collector’s item."

I'm not too sure I want a collector's item purely because one world government thought it depicted a naked baby, but it certainly does seem pretty rare, and it's got to be one of the strangest anti-piracy holograms out there.

Given Windows 95 came out in, you guessed it, 1995, and the baby was likely a few years old at the time of making the hologram, one can assume the baby is now in at least their mid 30s. Here's hoping for Windows 12; we get a recreation of the Hologram with the now 30-something-year-old, but please keep the overalls this time.

Though us PC gamers are unlikely to get the benefit of it, sometimes some new bit of PC hardware comes out of the enterprise market that just makes you go 'huh, that's neat'. Today, it's a new chip from IBM made in collaboration with Arm that runs architectures from both companies on a single chip. That means it will be able to run Arm-based Linux environments as well as IBM's z/OS, and the software that comes with both.

Prior to this, running multiple sets of instructions would require emulating the right instructions, ie, turning instructions from one architecture to another that can actually be processed by the cores. Though we won't know how well it runs in use until the chip actually launches, it's still an interesting bit of tech that could be more versatile long-term.

Combining two different architectures in one chip is very uncommon, though not unprecedented. The Register spoke to tech analyst George Cozma, and he explained: "Back in the deep, dark annals of the mid-1990s, IBM developed the PowerPC 615, a chip that could run both PowerPC and x86 code, with the active ISA selected at boot… The chip was reportedly intended for Apple during the clone era, but it was never sold publicly."

Arm says it is built for "the next era of enterprise infrastructure", and that includes, as one might expect, cloud and AI infrastructure. Its current chips are reportedly used by over 22 million developers worldwide, including businesses like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google.

Given Arm's significant developer support, IBM is likely looking to tap into this market with this collaboration, and Arm would benefit from the in with IBM and its customers.

The new chip is a pretty beefy one. Built on a 2 nm technology node (which not even the best gaming CPUs use yet) and containing 11 high-performance cores, it is said to operate at more than 5.7 GHz. It also has AI inference accelerators and an on-chip data processing unit for I.O. It seems like an impressive chip, which I suppose is to be expected with the current cloud and AI market.

IBM and Arm claim that this collaboration will get the best out of IBM's reliability, security, and scalability, whilst using Arm's power-efficient architecture, and "workload enablement expertise, and broad software ecosystem."

Mohamed Awad, the Executive Vice President of the Cloud AI Business Unit for Arm, argues, "As enterprises scale AI and modernize their infrastructure, the breadth of the Arm software ecosystem is enabling these workloads to run across a broader range of environments."

He continues, "Our collaboration with IBM builds on this progress, extending the Arm ecosystem into mission-critical enterprise environments and giving organizations greater flexibility in how they deploy and scale these workloads."

Naturally, an advanced new chip specifically built for use in enterprise environments won't exactly get you good gaming, but sometimes, those enterprise environments are doing cool things with tech. It's just a shame that the explosion of AI has to take so much PC hardware with it in the process.

Still, Arm's entry into the PC gaming sphere would certainly be easier with a few more bucks in its pockets.

My prime PC gaming hours tend to be when the rest of my household is already in bed. As such, the fantastically clicky-clacky key presses of a mechanical gaming keyboard echoing through our halls isn't really ideal. It's just as well then that Be Quiet! is back with a welcome update to the very nearly silent keyboard I loved last year, the Light Mount.

As someone with a perennially messy desk, the Light Mount TKL's 80% size is just right; I have room to swish my mouse, and I find I'm not forever accidentally hitting the capslock key as with other cut-down keebs. This TKL update offers more than just a smaller form factor, though, introducing the next generation of Be Quiet!'s Silent switches in Linear and Tactile flavours.

This TKL update also addresses one of the key problems I had with the original Light Mount by introducing new gaming features. This includes Quick Tap (SOCD), which will be sweet percussion to the ears of shooter fans—and at best eyebrow raising for the esports sickos. For those unfamiliar, SOCD stands for 'Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions'. Features falling under this umbrella, like Razer's Snap Tap and now Be Quiet!'s Quick Tap, prioritises your most recent directional input, making for strafing so efficient that Valve banned it from Counter-Strike 2.

Alongside Quick Tap, there's also more options for macros, and a few fresh customisation options within the IO center software. While I appreciate these additions and expansions, the TKL still isn't the most feature-packed gaming keyboard you'll find.

I still love the even-quieter switches, though. Coupled with the TKL's sturdy construction, this makes for another smart-looking package. However, it's rocking up to the rowdy PC gaming party as the quiet kid in the corner—that is to say, while some will definitely appreciate its charms, it can't compete with the louder, more popular keeb crowd.

Features

The Light Mount TKL is an 80% keyboard that enjoys the latest generation of Be Quiet!'s Silent switches. Tactile switches are available, but my review unit came with the Silent Linear V2s (though if you're craving clicky-ness, the media knob in the keyboard's top left corner has got you covered). According to Be Quiet!, the new V2s feature thicker gold contact points for the copper lever inside, as well as 'optimised lubrication for quieter operation and improved responsiveness'—well, I'll be the judge of that.

The V1 switches were already astonishingly understated on the full-sized board, making the most of the original Light Mount's internal layers of sound dampening. The V2 switches on the TKL are somehow even quieter.

Though the new switches feel a bit on the firm side right out of the box, they soon actuate just as cleanly as the V1s. Before, I described typing on the Tactile V1s as a controlled descent onto solid ground, but the Linear V2s have a little more pleasing texture underhand. It's not like stepping on a discordantly crunchy leaf, it's more like tiptoeing over a thin layer of soft sand—I like it!

The combination of the V2s and the TKL's construction also means the space bar is now much quieter than what I found on this board's big brother. Although, it's worth noting that future productions of both the full size Light Mount and the Dark Mount will come with the new V2 switches.

So far, so excellent: the Light Mount TKL is an actually quiet mechanical keyboard that won't tattle on you during late night gaming sessions. So, what about those fresh gaming features? Well, let's get the least exciting addition out of the way first: You can now disable the Capslock key in Game Mode.

Cool. Moving swiftly on, the Light Mount TKL also enjoys Be Quiet's version of SOCD, Quick Tap, for the first time. Whereas the original Light Mount felt more like a fairly quiet mechanical keyboard you could also use for gaming, the TKL feels a smidge more like a gaming keyboard in its own right.

And you know what gamers love above all else? Bathing themselves in the glow of RGB lighting. Like its predecessors, the TKL implementation of RGB is similarly classy; a dedicated light strip lines the very top of the keyboard, and every switch below enjoys an 'ARGB diffuser' for tasteful per-key illumination. On top of plenty of customisation options in the IO Center software, the Light Mount TKL also features support for Microsoft Dynamic Lighting.

Performance

The Be Quiet! Light Mount TKL is a joy to type on. Switch-feel is really second to none in my mind. But what about gaming? Well, as I've said before, my most intense encounter in an online game recently was getting lost in Big Walk (not to mention how I tend to spend more time hiding in bushes in Arc Raiders than running and gunning). Similarly, this isn't a gaming keyboard with the competitive scene in mind. With those expectations set, let's get into it.

I tend to accidentally hit the Capslock key on smaller form factor keyboards, such as the Cherry XTRFY K5 Pro TMR Compact. The option to disable this key in Game Mode is definitely welcome, though I do find myself stumbling on to Capslock a lot less with this TKL. I also found this keyboard's layout and 1,000 Hz maximum polling rate does little to impede my running around the feline-themed post office of Cat Mail Co. The Shift key for sprinting between barely organised shelves is comfortably within reach—so long as you don't subconsciously curl your hand into a weird cat paw-esque grip like I do.

The TKL's precision is definitely welcome as I roll up everything in sight in Once Upon a Katamari. The TKL's responsiveness already makes it easy to both slow my roll and steer clear of disaster. Quick Tap comes especially in handy here, making changing the direction of my Katamari all the snappier. Does that mean I start immediately smashing through all of my previous records? Eh, no, not exactly. A swish gaming keyboard can only do so much for a skill issue, after all.

Whether I'm whiling away the wee hours trying to improve my Katamari game, or simply lose track of time playing Paralives, the Light Mount TKL's luscious layers of sound-dampening foam and updated Silent switches continue to keep the secret of my late night gaming sessions.

Build Quality

This is a lovingly put together keyboard. I've already waxed lyrical about the factory-lubricated V2 Silent switches and their lovely, linear actuation. The keys themselves aren't completely smooth on top, offering a little bit of surface texture that's typical of PBT caps. This choice of material is generally more durable than ABS, and also tends to be much more resistant to picking up finger grease. In other words, these PBT keycaps will be looking box fresh for much longer.

Speaking of looks, you're not going to find the Light Mount TKL in any fun colourways. Normally, I would rue the lack of a lavender colourway, but I respect Be Quiet's vision; this is a smart looking keyboard that wouldn't be out of place in either a gamer den or an office with a strict dress code. Besides, if you're still desperate for a splash of colour, the IO Center software offers lots of customisation options for the RGB lighting.

A potentially unfortunate wrinkle is that PBT keycaps aren't known for letting a lot of light through. That means that, even with the keycaps' shine-through legends, the RGB lighting here is generally a more subtle affair. An arched ARGB diffuser on each switch keeps what glow there is evenly distributed, but I can't help but feel the original Light Mount's RGB was a smidge brighter.

Mind you, the gamer den I was testing the fullsize board in is generally much darker than the bright overhead lights of PCG towers where I spent most of my quality time with the TKL. Anyway, the strip of RGB at the top of the TKL is all the lovelier for being allowed to shine unimpeded.

Like the company's other boards, the TKL also enjoys three internal layers of sound-dampening foam. This makes good on the entire promise of Be Quiet! while also making for a keeb with a pleasing amount of sturdy heft. The same brushed aluminium top plate featured on Be Quiet's other boards is also the finishing touch here, acting as the shiny cherry topping an already beautifully constructed cake.

Software

IO Center can either be downloaded as a local desktop app, or accessed via the web. For the most part, it's a smartly laid out bit of software that makes it easy to tweak an array of settings. The latest version offers a helpful hardware monitor too, showing you temps and even fan RPM right there in the dashboard, though obviously this is less relevant in a review about a keyboard.

What is relevant is the robust selection of customisation options for the RGB lights. The usual rippling designs return, allowing for gradient, single, or dual colour lighting effects. If you aren't digging IO Center's 'general' pre-sets, you can create your own layered lighting, customising the look of each key and segment of the top light bar. The Light Mount TKL also enjoys support for Microsoft Dynamic Lighting for those with a much grander, all encompassing vision for their desk.

Now, obviously RGB lighting isn't the only thing that makes a gaming keyboard. Via IO Center, you can also fine tune the Game Mode across a small selection of toggles. These allow you to disable various key configurations while the mode is active, including Shift + Tab, Alt + F4, the Windows Key, Alt + Tab, and now Capslock too.

Interestingly, Quick Tap falls outside of IO Center's Key Binding sub-menu. Instead, you'll find options for remapping keys, editing the Function layer, and recording a whole load of Macros.

Quick Tap is found under 'Product Settings,' alongside the Game Mode. Quick Tap can be calibrated across five key pairs ('A' and 'D' are included as an editable default pair to start you off). While in Quick Tap settings, the software also warns that some competitive titles will restrict or ban SOCD tech, and advises that you check the rules for your game of choice before calibrating.

Value

The Light Mount TKL costs $140/€140. That's about $30/€30 less than the full size version would set you back at launch, though you can get a 100% Light Mount for much less now. That's just as well, as the full size version graces our best gaming keyboards guide as our pick for the best silent board. The obvious question, then, is does the TKL do enough to dethrone its older sibling?

Well, the TKL introduces a number of features that will be coming to future productions of the full size keyboard, such as the V2 switches. Those who already have the full size Light Mount will also be able to enjoy the slightly expanded Game Mode through updates to IO Center, though Be Quiet is still evaluating if further features will be added retroactively.

What I can tell you for sure right now is, due to technical limitations, neither the full size Light Mount or Dark Mount will have the TKL's 10 customisable layers of lighting effects, or its ability to record up to 999 Macro events. The original Light Mount is limited to 58, while the Dark Mount can record up to 200. So, if you use a lot of complex Macros and are looking for a quiet keeb, the TKL is the gaming keyboard to go with.

But that's the thing: many PC gamers will tell you 'the clack is the whole point' of a mechanical keyboard. Personally, I think there's room for a range of sound profiles in this space, but the Light Mount TKL's central reason for being is arguably niche in appeal.

As an 80% design, the TKL is far from the most space-saving thing either, plus plenty of smaller boards beat it on features, too. For instance, our pick for the best 75% keyboard is the Keychron K2 HE, which comes with Hall effect switches and offers customisable actuation points. It's also wireless, woody, and basically the same price as Be Quiet's slightly larger offering.

If you're looking to save yet more desk space, our pick for the best 60% keyboard is the Wooting 60HE v2, which our Jacob describes as "the best keyboard that Wooting has ever made." That's high-praise that feels absolutely earned once you hear just how feature-packed it is.

You can also get a feature-packed 65% gaming keyboard for much less than the Light Mount TKL. Case in point, the best budget gaming keyboard is the Gamakay x NaughShark NS68, and having spent some quality time with this $40 keyboard myself, going with something 100 bucks more feels like a steep ask.

Obviously, a $40 keyboard cannot hold a candle to Be Quiet's build quality, and its software also leaves a lot to be desired compared to IO Center's ease of use. But otherwise the NS68 still offers fantastic value for money with Hall effect switches and even PBT keycaps.

As a typist, I still love the Light Mount TKL; the switches really are that quiet and the key actuation is wonderfully smooth. Though I rue the lack of fun colourways, the aluminium topped chassis definitely looks very classy as it is, and I appreciate all of the options for colourful RGB customisation in the IO Center software. Although not the brightest, the RGB here illuminates my dank gamer den well enough.

As a PC gamer, I am left wanting just a little more for the money—specifically, the option to customise key actuation points wouldn't go amiss. To be fair, having seen how much the full size Light Mount has come down in price since its launch last year, the TKL may also drop to a similarly appealing price point before too long.

Furthermore, I'm hardly a high-tier competitive gamer and what's here on the TKL definitely suits most of my gaming needs. If you can take or leave gaming keyboards' bleeding edge features, but still want a well-made mechanical keyboard to class up your desk, there's lots to like about the Light Mount TKL.

One exceedingly unlucky Redditor ordered a Ryzen 5 9600X on Amazon only to have an empty box show up instead. After getting a refund and purchasing a second AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, that too seemed to be an empty box. Third time's the charm?

Posting to the PC Build subreddit, user No-Yak9776 says they mistakenly ordered from a third-party seller named "The Tech Group", but the order was fulfilled on Amazon. The user says they work at a PC shop that orders a lot of its tech through Amazon, and just happens to record unboxing videos for this specific purpose. That's pretty lucky, as without that evidence, getting a refund could be tough.

Naturally, you take some risk buying from unknown third-party sellers, even if they are shipped via Amazon. It's even pretty easy to order from a third-party seller by accident, as you have to click into a listing, then check the 'Sold By' section on the right-hand side just to check if it's actually sold by Amazon. And, in this case, the Ryzen 5 9600X from The Tech Group is shipped from Amazon, which suggests someone in the Amazon warehouse checked the CPU before sending it out.

This isn't to say that The Tech Group has intentionally sent out empty boxes (though two in a row certainly isn't a good track record, and someone complained about being sent an empty box from this company back in 2024 too). All I can say is that, if I were buying a CPU, I'd look for Amazon as the seller.

Still, that doesn't mean even Amazon will get it right all of the time. Some shippers handling CPUs might not know what to look for, and they're so light (with this specific one being 60 grams) that the rock-in-a-box strategy could be particularly potent. Still, this story offers a few good reminders for anyone looking to buy technology on Amazon.

First, if you can, make sure you are buying directly from Amazon or a seller you are familiar with. As well as this, make sure to record your unboxing process so you have evidence you can send back for the return if you need it. In this specific case, the redditor points out that The Tech Group has a good rating on Amazon, so you can never be too careful when shopping online.

It's a shame that, in this case, the redditor's time has been wasted, and they now have cardboard to recycle, but buying online can be much worse if you aren't too careful. If you plan on picking up some tech in the future, make sure to take all the precautions you can. Even if that means pointing a camera at the box as you open it up.

There are a few things I look for in a gaming monitor nowadays: OLED panel, high refresh rate, low response time, and some type of variable refresh rate technology. Lo and behold, this ASRock Phantom Gaming monitor has the lot, and for a very good price.

While most PC components keep getting pricier, gaming monitors, especially OLEDs, are only getting more affordable. This is a prime example of that trend: the Phantom Gaming PGO27QSA is just $299 at Newegg.

• Take a look at all the gaming monitor deals we've spotted or follow us on WhatsApp

It features a resolution of 2560 x 1440, within a 27-inch frame. That's 108 pixels per inch, for anyone counting, and provides a clear and crisp image overall compared to larger monitors.

A 1440p resolution is within reach for most modern midrange or better graphics cards; however, you will need a powerful GPU to reach the lofty refresh rate offered by this panel. That's 240 Hz. Though the inclusion of a variable refresh rate technology in AMD's FreeSync Premium helps there, matching the monitor's refresh rate to when the GPU is ready to fling another frame over.

This monitor is using a QD-OLED panel from Samsung, and as we've seen in our own testing, this panel technology delivers infinitely deep blacks and stunning vibrancy for gaming. With a typical SDR brightness of just 200 nits, this is sure to be an older generation panel compared to the latest and greatest found in MSI's MPG 322UR X24. We've seen Alienware taking a similar approach with its affordable AW2726DM: older panel, lower price.

The ASRock gaming monitor won't have the RGB Stripe subpixel layout we've come to enjoy on the latest panels, either. That means you can expect some level of text fringing across the panel. Generally, this has minimal impact on gaming, which remains just as glorious even on older QD-OLED tech.

With an option for black and white, and a surprisingly dextrous stand for the money, there's a whole lot of monitor here for the money. You don't get a USB hub, but you do get 2x HDMI 2.1 and 1x DisplayPort 1.4 ports. It also should come with a couple of cables rated to meet those specs in the box, which makes life a little easier.

👉Take a look at Newegg's entire Gamer Zone sale here👈

Apart from the very occasional bundle, I can't remember the last time we recommended a deal on a CPU. Monitors, yes. Gaming PCs, definitely. But not CPUs, because however well-priced they are, it's hard to recommend a system upgrade when buying the rest of the system needed to go along with it is so damn expensive. I'm not entirely surprised, then, that Mercury Research says that desktop CPU shipments from AMD and Intel "in the second quarter are best described as ugly."

According to the market research firm, this is the case despite growth in the overall CPU market:

"In spite of a decidedly gloomy outlook on client processors from the suppliers for the second quarter, actual results for both X86 and ARM CPUs were up strongly in the second quarter of 2026, with sequential quarterly growth of the total market exceeding 10 percent, far in excess of normal seasonal trends which call for a slight decline in the quarter."

In other words, server and mobile (laptop) CPUs spanning x86 and ARM are doing well enough that the poor sales of x86 CPUs doesn't damage the overall CPU market picture.

But for us gamers, those x86 'client' CPUs are the important ones, as they're what sit inside our gaming rigs.

Mercury says: "while server and mobile CPU shipments had strong growth, desktop CPU shipments declined on top of an already poor first quarter, resulting in a large on-year downturn in excess of 20%. Both AMD and Intel experienced significant on-year weakness in desktop CPUs—with AMD having relatively smaller declines—however on a sequential basis AMD's declines were much smaller than Intel's. As a result AMD gained share both sequentially and on year in desktop CPUs, in spite of lower shipments."

In other words, both AMD's and Intel's desktop CPU sales seem to be falling down quite a steep hill, but Intel's are falling a little quicker, meaning AMD is technically scooping up more market share in this space. It's just that space itself is getting smaller.

It's worth noting that a lot of these CPU shipments are likely those being packaged in pre-built OEM PCs or sent to system builders to be fitted in pre-built gaming PCs. Which means the numbers likely reflect not just a decline in people buying standalone CPUs, but people buying fewer full system upgrades, and system builders less interested in pallets full of the things. We've already seen corroboration that the number of worldwide PC shipments is falling.

And let's not forget that a lot of those who do buy a standalone CPU will be buying it alongside other components for a full system DIY upgrade. That means a motherboard, which is a reasonable cost; and RAM, which is absolutely not.

Given this, even if CPU prices remain stable, it's no surprise we're seeing fewer CPU shipments as more and more people are becoming reluctant to buy memory and storage at astronomical prices thanks to the global memory shortage.

It's also worth noting that although client laptop CPUs are doing well, that's not the case for everything in the world of portables. According to Counterpoint Research, for instance, the global smartphone market is expected to fall 14.3% this year due to cost pressures. The memory and component shortage, engendered by the AI server boom, is sure to keep affecting a whole bunch of products and industries. At least we only have to worry until, uhh, 2030 or beyond.

Not to sound too much like a broken record, but gaming PC prices are steadily climbing thanks to the global memory shortage. For a while, RX 9070 XT PCs were somewhat of a bastion against that decline, but this week while checking out different retailers I've noticed even those AMD PCs have started to climb.

What does that mean for those looking for a gaming PC? Well, the budget segment (around $1,000) isn't looking great, and while pushing above $2,500 can net you a great high-end rig, not everyone has that kind of money. In between the two—the mid-range segment—is looking pretty poor, too, but there are still some rigs just about holding on against the storm.

• Take a look at the other discounted PCs we've spotted or follow us on WhatsApp

These are RTX 5070 gaming PCs. RTX 5070 Ti rigs are way too expensive right now, and as I said, RX 9070 XT ones are finally following suit. RTX 5070 PCs, though? They're still hanging in there, admittedly a fair bit more expensive than they were last year, but still in that middling price range around $1,500.

I've dropped three of the best deals I've found on RTX 5070 gaming PCs below. None of them has 32 GB of RAM, which is indeed a pretty big caveat, but it's about par for the course in 2026. It also looks like you're only getting single-channel RAM with at least the Thermaltake and Acer rigs, though I do spot two sticks in one of the images for the MSI. Actual configs can vary between pics anyways.

The Thermaltake rig has an Core Ultra 250K Plus, and it actually lists its RAM speed: 6,000 MT/s. Plenty fast. For those reasons I'd probably be opting to spend the extra $50 for it. The 250K Plus is a very impressive chip and sits very nicely in a mid-range RTX 5070 build like this. Saying that, the Acer build gets an AIO cooler, even if it is only a two-fan one.

RTX 5070 gaming PC deals

The full details

👉 Check out all of Newegg's gaming PC deals 👈

A couple weeks back I noted that I'd been tracking GPU prices on an almost weekly basis for a year now, and that things have never been worse. Well, PC Partner—one of the biggest manufacturers of graphics cards you've probably never heard of—suggests it's going to get even worse. And probably quickly.

PC Partner makes a ton of graphics cards for its consumer facing brands Zotac, Inno3D, and Manli. I've visited one of its main factories in Dongguan, China, and it's production lines are big. So when Singaporean outlet, The Straits Times, notes the company as saying that the supply of graphics cards is going to get real tight in the coming months it's worth listening.

And the worst part about it is that apparently it's going to be the entry level cards that will be the most adversely affected. With severe shortages comes increased prices, and while Nvidia cards with VRAM capacities of 8 GB haven't had the spiking price tags of their more heavily memory'd cousins, it looks like it won't be long before they do.

Benchlife, reporting on the PC Partner announcement, has itself confirmed that supply of Nvidia's RTX Blackwell GPUs in the third quarter of this year is below the second quarter, and that supply at the end of the year will be even lower than that. It also notes that this isn't purely down to the constrained supply of GPUs and memory owing to the demands of the data centre elites, but that other parts of the graphics card manufacturing process—such as PCBs and power componentry—are also suffering from long lead times compared with last year.

Given that Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and RTX 5070 graphics cards are both now batting around the $800 mark, it's mighty concerning that the more affordable end of the GPU spectrum look set to get slammed with higher prices, too. The doom disciple in me fears for a world where an RTX 5050 costs $500.

Though it can only cost $500 if someone is willing to pay that and surely, surely no-one would. Would they?

But it's not just going to be Nvidia cards though. It has been GeForce GPUs which have been affected more by the most recent price spike (though RX 9000 series cards have also had their fair share of price increases immediately after launch), but PC Partner is also the contract manufacturer of Sapphire GPUs, one of AMD's biggest graphics card makers, so I don't doubt it was talking to those cards, too. Especially if part of the supply constraints are around other components all GPUs need to live.

And if AMD cards get priced out of the reach of us mere PC gaming mortals, then there will be no alternatives for us.

A proposed class action lawsuit against Logitech is attempting to recover funds that were allegedly "extracted from American consumers" as a result of the Trump administration's tariffs.

The complaint [PDF] is being led by a construction company, SJK Development, and a California resident, both of whom say they bought Logitech mice at higher, tariff-affected prices. It was filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division last week (via Ars Technica).

"This case is an example of a large multinational corporation and its US subsidiary taking advantage of its customers who rely on the integrity of manufacturers to sell products to customers in good faith," the complaint alleges.

"[The defendant] refused to be honest with their customers by raising prices across their product catalog to allegedly account for costs due to tariffs and then failed to return tariff proceeds when the US Supreme Court declared those tariffs unlawful."

While Logitech did not publicly announce price hikes, the complaint makes mention of the company's executives discussing higher prices and profits in regards to offsetting tariffs in its subsequent earnings calls.

"The company’s CFO, Mr. Anversa, attributed the company’s expanded gross margins—up approximately 130 basis points year-over-year in the fourth quarter—in part to Logitech’s United States subsidiary’s pricing actions executed in April 2025." the filing says.

"Mr. Anversa stated that those pricing actions, together with favorable currency movements, more than offset tariffs and promotions."

The Trump administration's IEEPA tariffs were ruled against by the US Supreme Court in February of this year, after it found that the US president did not have the authority to impose them. Since then, Logitech has received a sum of $61 million as part of the refund process. The lawsuit is aiming for a judgement which would force Logitech to give customers a share of the proceeds.

"Logitech has been—and absent relief will continue to be— enriched twice over at its customers’ expense," the filing continues. "Once by the tariff-justified overcharges collected from Plaintiffs and the Class, and again by the government’s refund, with interest, of the very duties those overcharges were represented to cover."

Several other tech companies, including Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, have been on the receiving end of similar legal actions related to tariff refunds. Earlier this month, PC cooling company Arctic announced that it would be rolling back prices on its components for US customers, after receiving a refund of its own.

I have reached out to Logitech for comment, and will update this article if any is received. In the meantime, however, I doubt this will be the last proposed class action suit regarding tariff-inflated pricing. Whatever the outcomes, it'll likely be some time before any major resolution comes to pass.

Last week, we covered the very strange occurrence of a bug in the latest Windows update. Yes, a bug in a Windows update, say it isn't so. Unfortunately, this one does incur our wrath of gamers more than most because it leads to some games becoming unresponsive. Games like Arc Raiders, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals. But we might have to look at our obsession with RGB lighting

When the issue first came to light, shortly after the release of KB5121003, the developer of two of those games came out with a theory. Embark Studios chalked the crashes up to a single driver, inpoutx64.sys, and noted you could disable the troublesome file through the Command Prompt.

As it turns out, that was spot on. Microsoft also thinks that inpoutx64.sys is the problem. Or, at the very least, something doesn't quite gel between inpoutx64.sys, the affected games, and the latest Windows update.

The KB5121003 update is seemingly the catalyst of the whole affair. Microsoft downplays it slightly in the wording of its ongoing investigation: "We are presently working to understand the relationship between these RGB components and the games which trigger this issue. We will provide an update when more information is available."

Anyways, Microsoft also notes what it currently believes is the actual cause of the issue, and it's pinning it mostly on RGB lighting.

"Ongoing investigation indicates that this issue is related to peripherals or internal device components which have RGB lighting features. Such devices may install drivers or code components with file names similar to inpoutx64. In systems where these drivers are found, the issue is then triggered by launching certain games."

Microsoft offers a way to disable the driver via the registry. There's a non-zero chance of messing up your entire PC when diving into the registry, so just be vigilant as you make any changes. Microsoft even recommends backing up the whole thing should anything go wrong.

• Open the Windows registry. This can be done by opening the start menu and typing "regedit". Select the Registry Editor from the results.
• Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\inpoutx64. This can be done using the folders on the left side of the window, or typing the path into the address line at the top of the window.
• NOTE: Ensure you have backed up the registry, as per the important note above. It may be necessary if you need to undo the change in the following steps.
• On the right side of the window, find the registry value named Start. Double click this key and enter the number 4 under the field titled Value data.
• Close the window and restart your computer.

As Microsoft notes, this may disable some RGB lighting features or mess with the software used to control them. So, while the company tries to figure out what exactly is causing an issue between the games, driver, and update, those affected may have to decide between playing games or their PC looking pretty. Tough call—you could also just rollback your PC to a previous Windows update and wait for a proper fix.

This week, Beijing will host the second annual World Humanoid Robot Games. Gaining initial attention last year as a sort of inaugural robot Olympics, the event features thousands of humanoid robots operated by hundreds of teams, competing in over 50 events ranging from weightlifting to simulated fire rescue.

This year, the World Humanoid Robot Games is once again generating buzz, thanks to a circulating video showing one of its competing robot runners experiencing a spectacular malfunction as it sprints at full speed into a barrier with reckless disregard for anything other than moving fast—an incident that is in no way a metaphor for the state of current technological endeavor.

As the WHRG organizers explain on its website, its 50 events are divided into competition events and scenario-based events. The latter scores robots on their ability to perform tasks in specific settings, like retail, food and beverage service, with robots that complete those tasks fully autonomously earning a higher score than those being controlled remotely.

Competition events, meanwhile, are a selection of more traditional pseudo-athletic contests, where the humanoid robots autonomously compete in familiar, olympic-style events like long jump, gymnastics—and track races.

The recorded robotic carnage in question purportedly emerged from a "training session" for one of the WHRG's track events. By the time the video starts, the lone robotic runner on the track is already at a dead sprint, its rubberized feet loudly clomping as it pumps its flailing limbs with a furious, almost juvenile intensity—an intensity so singular that the robot makes no attempt to change its course before it charges directly into a safety barrier, its head colliding with an echoing thud.

The robot then stumbles backwards, its feet bicycling in cartoonish "woowoowoowoowoo!" fashion in a vain attempt to forestall the cruel effects of gravity, until its flailing causes it to arc its torso backwards right at the moment of impact. As a result, its waist joint is wrenched into gruesome overextension, causing a spray of sparks and smoke to burst from its interior mechanisms. A nearby member of the event staff flinches away from the explosion, turning his back on the fallen competitor and abandoning it as a lost cause.

You can also watch it in three separate angles at once. If you want.

It's a grisly scene—but it's thankfully not freighted with any symbolic meaning. It's an isolated malfunction, not a poignant encapsulation of the apparatus of the countless disciplines arrayed in pursuit of accelerating autonomous technologies as fast as possible, without considering what the point of a sprint is if you're on fire when you stop moving. It's not downstream of the same impulses making LLMs that hack themselves and each other when they shouldn't, or CEOs writing manifestos to defend their pervert goggle enterprise.

It's just good old competition, and it's an honor to compete.

Typing something that looks a bit like a face using nothing but a semicolon, an underscore, and what I've just learned is called a caret will never not be charming to me. However, the odd kaomoji is the limit of my text-based artistic talent. I can do nought but bow down to the supreme power of ASCII artists—especially when some are making entire cyberpunk cities out of ASCII symbols.

But rather than an impressive 2D image, one solo developer has created an ASCII sci-fi city that you can walk around. Traditional 3D models are eschewed in favour of a custom ray-casting engine that, at the risk of over-simplifying, renders visible surfaces as ASCII art. Built by Grow Now! Games, the creator describes the project as a "fun little prototype" that runs from a single HTML file.

"There's no Unity, there's no Unreal, there's no 3D models, textures, or shaders," the developer explains. "Underneath the system, if you like, it's a grid-based 3D world. The city stores where roads, buildings, trees, cars, and people are, along with things like building height. And every frame, the renderer casts rays out from the camera across that grid, finds the first thing each ray hits, and uses the distance to work out perspective, size, depth, and what should be hidden behind other things."

Rendering at a 'resolution' of 120 x 56 ASCII characters with noticeable flickering, it's not the easiest thing on the eyes. Still, at the time of writing, the developer's original prototype video has been viewed more than 1 million times, and if that isn't evidence folks crave visual styles beyond grim-dark realism, I don't know what is.

The developer has continued to work on the project since uploading that first video earlier this month, detailing a number of improvements in their latest upload. The biggest news is that they're now offering access to the prototype for any curious cyberpunks via their Ko-Fi. Alongside engine improvements, this playable version also bumps up the resolution to 180 x 80 ASCII characters, making for a generally smoother, more detailed experience.

Another big update to the prototype gives the buildings both interiors and multiple floors, allowing you to view the ASCII city from a fresh perspective. Grow Now! Games is far from done with the project, saying they've begun thinking about implementing a dialogue system and turning the prototype into a more fully-featured game.

Though still pretty unique, it wouldn't be the first game with an ASCII art style. For just one recent example from last year, our Josh got lost in the symbol sauce of Effulgence RPG, a turn-based title that sees you turning monster parts into weapons. Grow Now! Games hasn't teased any details beyond that potential dialogue system, but I can't wait to see how they paint their little ASCII town red.

The internet is burning with speculation regarding the recent GTA 6 leaked footage, particularly as it appears to have been sourced from someone playing an actual build, rather than leaked video from Rockstar itself.

While we've been pouring over the videos and pulling out some of the juicy in-game details for ourselves, I've also seen some discussion regarding whether the footage was captured from a PC version of the game.

Putting aside the dubiousness of "I have devs in my DMs," I'd say this is probably likely to be correct, as others have suggested. It's either that, or the leaker has access to a console devkit—which seems less likely than a development build that runs on a PC being passed around behind the scenes.

The problem is, the idea that a PC build exists doesn't really tell us much. It'll be being developed on PC, of course, as that's the platform on which most games are made.

And while a PC release of GTA 6 hasn't been officially announced, there's no doubt that a retail PC version will appear at some point. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that the console release would be "serving the core" first, so it looks like us PC gamers will still have to wait. Just like we did for GTA V, and Red Dead Redemption 2, and... you get the idea.

What would really get me jumping up and down, though, would be an idea of the specs this particular build was running on. Some of the footage shows some reasonably fancy lighting, and areas with surprisingly long draw distances, as do the official trailers to date.

So what I really want to know, alongside the rest of the PC gaming public, is what sort of hardware we're going to need for smooth frame rates when the PC version eventually rears its head. Will a budget graphics card suffice? Or are we going to have to break out the RTX 5080s and RTX 5090s to push the graphics sliders up?

From the footage I've seen so far, it looks like the game is running at more like 30 fps than 60—although video frame rate conversion being what it is, that might not necessarily be the case. At what settings, though? I've got literally no idea. It looks pretty good, I know that much.

I'd say that given the scope we've seen to date (and Rockstar's tendency to push the boat out for PC releases), we're probably in for something with a relatively scalable low end, and a demanding range of graphics options at the top for the well-heeled gamer. Graphics card prices are ridiculous right now, haven't you heard?

Again, though, this is mostly guesswork. Because there's not much to do right now but guess.

As things currently stand, what we can glean from this footage in regards to PC is "this was probably captured on one," despite some of the leaps in logic I've seen elsewhere. Yes, I am fun at parties. Join me next week for another dissertation on how PC hardware prices are likely screwed for the next few years, and my take on the dubious existence of one Mr. S. Claus.

When I can't make up my mind between two wireless gaming headsets, a fun colourway has been the clincher more times than I'd like to admit. For my sins, I can be easily swayed by the appearance of hardware—and that has given me the invaluable experience of spending a lot of time with kit that is arguably form over function. So trust me when I say you'll want to prick up your ears for this headset deal.

All these years later, the HyperX Cloud Alpha is still an incredibly impressive wireless gaming headset for the money. No, there's no fun colourways beyond the red and black gamer stylings, but the Cloud Alpha doesn't need stylish gimmicks to be head-turning. That's especially true now as it's down to its lowest ever price, costing only $109 from Amazon.

Yes, the audio is good, but let's talk about the real headline act: this wireless headset's incredible 300-hour battery life, even longer than its successor, the Cloud Alpha Wireless 2. Hope described the original's battery life as 'witchcraft' in her HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless review, going on to share, "I have not charged this headset once since I got it and it feels like a trick."

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

Knowing that there's such a beefy battery inside of this relatively light set of cans only further impresses—HyperX doesn't call it the 'Cloud' line for nothing. Hope wrote, "The top band is thick and has soft padding underneath. This coupled with the equally soft earcuffs makes for a very cozy experience, and does an excellent job of blocking out noise. There's no active noise cancelling, but the seal of the cups come dangerously close."

Coupled with this wireless headset's audio performance, you're in for an immersive experience. Hope really rated these for their crisp, clear sound quality, saying that "music sounds amazing," though gaming is the obvious stand out thanks to the directional sound features.

"I loaded up some Doom Eternal and promptly terrified myself," Hope writes, "If you've ever wanted to know what it sounds like having a Cacodemon suddenly show up and whisper sweet blah-things into very specifically your left ear then these can absolutely deliver. Footsteps are nice and clear for creatures who have them, and spatial sound works an absolute treat. [...] A+ would have my soul leave my body again."

It may not be the prettiest gaming headset I ever did see, but questionable style can be overlooked for performance like this. And at this lowest ever price point, those desperate for an injection of style could potentially DIY their own cat ears…

👉 Check out the rest of Amazon's gaming headset deals 👈

We've been tracking graphics card prices for the past twelve months and after yet another pricing surge last week, there's been a wave of depression sweeping the PC Gamer offices. It's Nvidia GPUs that have been hit the hardest, with the ludicrous situation where the cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB we can find is more expensive than the cheapest RTX 5070.

What's even more ludicrous—and surely entirely unsustainable—is that both those cards are both close to $800. These are the fourth and fifth tiers of Nvidia's RTX 50-series lineup and that pricing is utterly punitive for PC gamers.

So, that had me wondering what this might mean for the next generation of cards, and how much you dear people, our PC Gamer readers would accept paying for your next graphics card. So we've been asking: How much would you be willing to spend on a new GPU? And honestly, the answers have surprised me; you're willing to spend way more than I could!

How much would you be willing to spend on a new graphics card?

Given the recent price hikes, here's what the PC Gamer audience be okay spending on a new card

Votes (%)

$600 - $800

22

$400 - $500

18

$800 - $1000

15

$300 - $400

10

$1500+

10

$1000 - $1500

9

Up to $200

8

$200 - $300

7

Votes (%) Data

Product	Value
$600 - $800	22
$400 - $500	18
$800 - $1000	15
$300 - $400	10
$1500+	10
$1000 - $1500	9
Up to $200	8
$200 - $300	7

The recent pricing surge is all down to the AI-backed memory crisis, and these 16 and 12 GB cards respectively are seeing their pricing rocket as a result of the healthy dollop of GDDR7 memory attached to the GPUs. But it's not just production constraints pushing up the price of cards going into retail, it's also going to partly be down to AI enthusiasts looking for Nvidia GPUs with high VRAM capacities to run their local AI systems.

And yes, once more PC gamers are suffering at the hands of folk using both the technology and our graphics cards for things other than gaming and massively spiking the prices as a result.

But I'm surprised that a hefty 56% of readers who responded to our poll would be willing to spend $600 or more on their next graphics card, though I think the number that got me thinking most was just how many of you would actually drop $1000 or more on a new GPU. 19% is a not statistically insignificant percentage, and that is going to make Jen-Hsun's face light up as he considers pricing the new RTX 6070 Ti at $1,000, despite looking at dropping the VRAM capacity to 4 GB of GDDR5 because of the ongoing memory crisis. DLSS 5 will take up the slack, right?

Statistically speaking, it's also interesting to see the parity between the 10% of readers looking at the $300 - $400 segment and the other 10% waaaaay down the other end of the spectrum happy to spend $1500 or more.

But the $600 - $800 segment is the most popular among our readers, with 22% of the vote, and $400 - $500 just behind that with 18%. That's probably where I'd find myself, to be honest.

Given the state of the market, maybe you guys are just being realists in terms of what new GPUs will cost. But it's still kinda surprising to see so few people around the budget end of the market; that's something I've always seen as a strength of PC gaming, but it's also been an underserved colour in the GPU spectrum of recent times.

Let us know where you fit in the spectrum in the comments below!

This week we want to know how you feel about monitors...

As we've reported on many times over the years, Valve's hardware efforts attract the attention of the DIY project community like no other. The Steam Controller is no exception, as creator Owen Feldman has managed to get classic text adventure Zork running on its internal hardware.

Feldman has documented the project on their blog, but it wasn't always a smooth ride to convince the controller to play ball (via Hackaday). An internal tool discovered within a Steam hardware updater folder was used to flash the firmware—but Feldman managed to temporarily brick their controller in the process.

After recovering the controller, a custom Rust-based program was used to emulate an Intel 8080 CPU and run the CP/M-80 operating system on the Steam Controller's internal processor. As the device has no keyboard or screen, the built-in USB connection was used for I/O streaming purposes.

So, what do you do first when you've successfully convinced a controller to emulate a CPU and run an OS all on its own? Well, you play games on it, of course.

A floppy disk (hey, remember those?) copy of Zork was used to load the game via an external drive, resulting in a Steam Controller rig that's been connected to a remarkable number of add-on devices. I doubt it knows exactly what hit it.

Still, the end result looks like a very playable experience. Feldman describes the process of creating the custom program as "1514 lines of pain," but what they've ended up with is the PC hardware equivalent of a magic trick. Who knew the Steam Controller could play games in its own right?

However, I think I'll be leaving this Steam Controller-flashing method well alone, and not just because my Rust coding abilities are non-existent. Feldman warns that bricking your device through the flashing process is a real possibility, and given that it's a $99 piece of kit, perhaps it's better to leave this one to the braver hardware hackers among us.

An unusual sight was seen at a recent San Diego city council meeting, as arch Sith Lord Darth Vader made a rare public appearance to advocate for Flock's AI-assisted surveillance technology. Okay, someone dressed as Darth Vader. But can we really be sure?

Yes, yes we can. Anyway, 404 Media reports that Vader spoke with his trademark zeal about his support for the use of Flock's license plate-reading tech in the city.

"The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium," said the Dark Lord of the Sith.

"Because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers," Vader continued. "They are following children. They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this. I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend. How will the people trust this city council when this city council continues to vote for surveillance technology that imprisons them?"

"You must work on your Jedi mind tricks," Vader implored. "This is what the Emperor needs. This technology will help us find the rebel scum and their hidden base on Hoth. This technology will help us find Luke Skywalker as he traverses the universe in his X-wing. This technology is a necessary, necessary force."

Well, I think his point was made. The San Diego area has hundreds of Flock cameras already installed on its streets, and privacy advocates have criticised a deal earlier this year with the San Diego Police to allow the Flock Nova platform to integrate the department's investigative data from license-plate readers, video footage, 911 dispatch calls, and police records—without, the campaigners say, going through the city's proper public oversight process.

A leak earlier this year alleged that Flock Nova would allow police to track the movements of private citizens by cross referencing license plates with data obtained from lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches.

According to an internal company recording obtained by 404 media, a Flock employee said: "You're going to be able to access data and jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person and understand what that context is, link to other people that are related to that person... there's very powerful linking."

As powerful as the dark side of the force? Perhaps not, but it seems to be somewhere close. Still, when a Sith Lord speaks in passionate advocacy of your efforts, it may be worth considering if you're standing on the right side of the ethical line.

I've slowly come to the realisation that, for computer speakers, once you get past the mid-range price point it becomes all about diminishing returns. There are some really solid budget picks (with Creative's Pebble Pro being our budget speaker of choice), but the $100-200 range is where you get the most features and the best price-to-value ratio. Go beyond that and you're spending a lot of money for only incrementally better sound and some non-essential luxuries.

And nothing quite proves that better than the Creative XF1, a set of compact yet incredibly useful speakers with a whole host of neat extra features. And they even come with two cork stands to prop the speakers, which can go entirely unused if you like your speakers flat, but It's still plain neat that they come in the box for no extra charge.

Naturally, the more compact you go, the less room you have to jam speakers full of large tweeters and woofers, and as such, the balance with the XF1 isn't just where to cut costs in each unit, but just how small you can condense them down before the sound starts to take a hit.

And Creative, for the most part, has nailed that balance, with a set of speakers that are small enough to fit on my desk, but loud enough to shake it.

Features

Creative XF1 is loaded with great little design decisions. For one, it has a robust set of connectivity options, with it working via USB Type-C, aux, and Bluetooth. And that Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity even supports LDAC wireless, so it retains a high level of quality no matter the connection.

The single button on the front of the right speaker can not only be spun to adjust volume, but also clicked to swap between the connectivity modes. This means swapping from my gaming PC to my phone or laptop requires no more than a mere button press. And, in practice, this works really well too. With my default audio setting being the speaker, I can click to connect to Bluetooth, and my rig swaps to my plugged-in headphones, which is effectively a poor man's version of the NZXT SwitchMix (and being much cheaper, 'poor man's' is apt).

It's a pretty simple set of speakers otherwise. Simply plug it into the mains, connect it to the left speaker, plug it into a device and start playing sound. One neat feature that comes in the box is a set of cork stands. Without clicking into place or requiring any tools, you merely place the speakers on top and can elevate the speakers at a 15° angle. Generally speaking, being able to elevate the speakers, and therefore elevate the tweeter and woofer, means that it directs the sound more towards you. You may not use the stands, but the fact that they come in the box for free is a solid extra.

Sound

The XF1 speakers have striking quality and clarity for the price and size. Bass, mids, and treble come through clear and are easy to pick out in the mix. And it offers strong sound reproduction at low volumes, which some speakers struggle with (here's looking at you Edifier G2000 Pro). They can also get fierce loud, which is likely linked to the fact that they are 72 watts RMS. Even the Kanto Ora, a significantly more expensive set of desktop speakers, only offers an RMS wattage of 50 watts.

Naturally, you will get better-sounding speakers if you spend more (like the Kanto Ora I just mentioned), and if you are willing to dedicate the space for it, you can get truly superb sound quality out of the likes of the Mackie CR3.5BT. But I have yet to find a set of speakers that offers this level of quality out of its size and price.

It's a speaker designed for games, music, and movies, and it handles them all well thanks in part to smart EQ modes in its software. The gaming mode cuts a tad from the upper mids, whilst giving a light boost to everything else, whereas the music mode drops bass and raises sub bass and upper mids. The Movie EQ also cuts the bass somewhat, while raising everything else.

There's a rather impressive amount of EQ options in Creative's software, including EQ presets for specific games. The GTA preset is higher on the upper mids, where the Last of Us provides a boost in bass and upper mids, with light cuts in the lower mids, sub bass and highs. I love how varied these presets are, and I think the speakers are at their best with a very slight uptick in the bass. Still, even at its default preset, the XF1 is a tiny force to be reckoned with.

The metallic clangs of Abyssus are as metallic and clangy as you'd want them to be here. It pounds when you shoot the shotgun, but it's able to catch the nuance of a soft hum or whir. Abyssus is a game all about its murky, watery atmosphere, and that atmosphere is unhindered coming from the light frame of XF1.

For something a bit more aggressive, I sicced the speakers on speedrunner Echobreaker, and found its combinations of synth and techno drums to come through well. When the thumps, the speakers do a good job of representing that thump, shaking on top of the desk.

Moving over to something more overtly musical, Sea Power's Disco Elysium soundtrack sounds great on the XF1. Trumpets in the middle and high end have real depth to them, where strings and piano fill out the bottom of the mix. There's a solid clarity to everything, making it easy to pick out each instrument in their own registers.

You aren't getting audiophile-level quality here, but I also wouldn't expect it. The bass, mids, and highs are all clear and easy to pick out. You can get speakers which offer a deeper sound, you can get speakers that thump a little more when the bass kicks in, and you can hear more nuance in the mix from something more high-end, but what Creative have done for the price is genuinely quite impressive.

Ergonomics

With the width being just under 10 centimetres and length 19 centimetres, these bookshelf-style speakers are light, easy to set up, and can fit on many a desk. Being front-facing, they are clearly designed to sit on top of a desk and point at you from just a few feet away. The size and setup do make them at their best when plugged into a gaming rig, and the included cork stands help carry that sound straight to your ears.

Though it has many connectivity options, you only really need to plug in the power cable and connecting cable between the speakers to get it up and running. That makes it a solid pick in a clean setup with few wires. The benefit of their size and simplicity is that they're easy to move around and even easier to clean. The only thing you have to worry about when wiping down the XF1 is accidentally moving the volume knob and blasting yourself with The Cardigans, or whatever equally banging band you're listening to.

Aesthetics

The review model I got my hands on is the black variant of the XF1, and its looks are simple and understated. There's a small light near the volume knob to show what device you're connected to, but it has no other lighting, and it has a very simple Creative Logo on the bottom of the left speaker. Otherwise, it lacks any branding and could fit into a tidy setup with ease.

On the whole, I'd say an understated aesthetic serves these speakers well. They're pretty no-nonsense in a lot of ways, but can really deliver in the sound department when you crank them up.

Value

Though it doesn't sound as good as the $350 Kanto Ora I tested back in 2024, it offers a very similar experience in a lot of ways. They're both light and small bookshelf speakers with strong connectivity, and they both have an all-black, understated look, making them great in gaming and non-gaming setups.

For something a little closer to their price point, they blow the Edifier G2000 Pro out of the water in both look and sound. Though the G2000 Pro's throwback is more unique, I think Creative wins in looks, sound clarity, and software.

Though they're more expensive than the Logitech Z407 (at around $120), which is another set of mid-range speakers, I'd be picking the XF1. The Z407 does come with a subwoofer, offering bigger bass, which is a huge boon, but sound quality, connectivity, and ease of use are top-notch here. The XF1 also comes with a subwoofer output jack, so you can plug in your own subwoofer if you have one.

If you just need something, I wouldn't go for the XF1. In fact, there are a few cheaper Creative speakers I'd be picking if my budget were tighter, like the Pebble Pro or the Sound Blaster GS3. Still, if you're looking at around the mid to high $100s, there's nothing else I'd be putting on my small desk.

The Creative XF1 are firmly a mid-range set of speakers, with a mid-range price to match, but you are getting a lot of features and clear sound in return.

I'll get it clear right out of the gate: I think the AMD 3D V-Cache chips are absolutely the best choice for a PC gamer wanting to get the absolute most out of their system when it comes purely to silky gaming frame rates. They're great CPUs, which use a hefty dollop of extra L3 cache specifically to improve their gaming performance, and that's why the Ryzen 7 9800X3D still sits proudly at the top of our best CPU for gaming list.

But, having just finished writing up my AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D review, AMD's latest pitch for a budget gaming chip, it's made me seriously consider whether I would actually pick Intel's Core Ultra 5 250K Plus instead. And I rather think I might.

The whole justification for the existence of the 7700X3D—a chip that is essentially just a slower clocked Ryzen 7 7800X3D, itself a great CPU from 2023—is that AMD is delivering a more affordable 3D V-Cache CPU to drop into your existing AM5 motherboard. That is, on the surface, a laudable endeavour.

There are a couple of problems here, however. The first is competition from within the AMD stables; namely the fact that, while the 7700X3D does have a vastly lower MSRP to that of the 7800X3D (it's $329 plays $450) the older chip has had a long time to establish itself in retail and as such there are a lot of them around. And that means the actual on-sale prices are essentially the same, and sometimes the 7800X3D is actually available for less than the 7700X3D.

And the second issue is that the value proposition of the 7700X3D only really stands up if you are looking to make a CPU upgrade to an existing AM5 system. Say, if you've already got a rig with a Ryzen 5 7600 in it, for example. But if you're building a new system from scratch—and if you are, I feel your pricing pain, my droog—then at this end of the market the latest Intel Arrow Lake chips are mighty tempting.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus has popped up with low-end pricing and high-end performance. It may only come rocking a six Performance-core layout, with 12 Efficient-cores, but that does give it 18 cores of multi-threaded grunt and some surprisingly good gaming prowess to boot.

Previous

1 / 2

Next

1080p gaming performance

We test games at 1080p for CPU tests to better highlight performance diffences between chips

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra + DLSS Balanced)Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra)Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic)Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (1080p High)Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

112

73

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

118

93

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

120

88

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

117

59

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra + DLSS Balanced) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	112 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	118 Avg FPS, 93 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	120 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	117 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

122

52

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

109

67

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

118

77

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

117

51

Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	122 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	109 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	118 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	117 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

104

56

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

98

56

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

89

49

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

99

49

Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	104 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	98 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	89 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	99 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

148

78

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

145

79

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

150

86

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

152

83

Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	148 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	145 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	150 Avg FPS, 86 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	152 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

152

77

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

174

141

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

159

127

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

165

143

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	152 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	174 Avg FPS, 141 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	159 Avg FPS, 127 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	165 Avg FPS, 143 1% Low FPS

The Ultra 5 250K Plus is surprisingly competitive against the more expensive X3D CPUs from AMD.

Synthetic gaming performance

The industry standard 3DMark benchmark is a good measure of relative capabilities even if it doesn't necessarily translate into gaming performance

3DMark Time Spy

CPU index score

Overall index score

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

12848

16435

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

19987

17567

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

13078

16521

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

9389

15780

3DMark Time Spy Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	12848 CPU index score, 16435 Overall index score
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	19987 CPU index score, 17567 Overall index score
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	13078 CPU index score, 16521 Overall index score
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	9389 CPU index score, 15780 Overall index score

The Ultra 5 250K Plus is surprisingly competitive against the more expensive X3D CPUs from AMD.

Sure, it's not quite got the 3D V-Cache boost, but in a lot of games the Intel chip is really not far off the pace of either the 7700X3D or the 7800X3D. And it comes with a price tag of just $200. Even AMD's budget six-core X3D chip, the Ryzen 5 7600X3D is more expensive than that.

Intel's chip will give you a far more rounded processor, with plenty of gaming and a ton of productivity performance for $130 less than the latest X3D budget option. That gives you $130 dollars to spend on a better GPU than you might have otherwise been able to afford if you'd built around the AMD platform. And just look at the relative compute power on offer with this thing versus the more expensive AMD chips.

Compute performance

We may be PC Gamer but we also want to know what the productivity capabilities are of our CPUs

Cinebench 2024Blender 4.2.07zipHandbrake 1.8.1

Single-core index score

Multi-core index score

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

102

1011

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

138

1817

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

113

1082

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

107

810

05001,0001,5002,000

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	102 Single-core index score, 1011 Multi-core index score
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	138 Single-core index score, 1817 Multi-core index score
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	113 Single-core index score, 1082 Multi-core index score
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	107 Single-core index score, 810 Multi-core index score

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

79

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

132

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

81

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

62

037.575112.5150

Samples per minute

Blender 4.2.0 Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	79
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	132
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	81
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	62

Compressing (GIPS)

Decompressing (GIPS)

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

115

124

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

147

146

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

118

128

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

93

98

037.575112.5150

7zip Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	115 Compressing (GIPS), 124 Decompressing (GIPS)
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	147 Compressing (GIPS), 146 Decompressing (GIPS)
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	118 Compressing (GIPS), 128 Decompressing (GIPS)
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	93 Compressing (GIPS), 98 Decompressing (GIPS)

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

70.8

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

101

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

76

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

57

037.575112.5150

UHD > 1080p60 (fps)

Handbrake 1.8.1 Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	70.8
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	101
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	76
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D	57

Intel's 18-thread processor has cleary superior compute chops across the board, so if you're doing any other than gaming with your PC it's the better choice.

The caveat to the Intel positivity here, though, is the platform longevity of AMD's AM5 socket is absolutely unrivalled in the industry. While AMD has confirmed that it will be supporting the socket through to 2029, and has recently celebrated the 10 year lifespan (and counting) of its AM4 platform, Intel is still replacing its CPU socket pretty much every generation.

So yes, that means the board you stick the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus into only has a very limited upgrade path within the Arrow Lake generation, and any new Intel chips you covet will require an entire motherboard upgrade, too. That means, if you are the sort of person who is going to look at a CPU upgrade down the line, the dead-end of the Intel LGA 1851 socket is going to be a barrier to your future-proofing plans.

But it's worth asking yourself whether that really is going to be you. Be honest. When was the last time you actually did an in-place CPU upgrade? The notion of future-proofing your build with an easy upgrade path is always a tempting one, and is a good way to extend the operating life of your rig, especially in these 'spensive times of ours.

But if you're one of the majority of PC gamers who never touches that part of your machine, who might only ever upgrade their GPU or SSD at a push, then maybe it's worth considering making the savings up front and putting that towards a better graphics card in your build.

As $70-$100 controllers are only getting more and more impressive, you might be wondering what the pro controller market can do to make you spend that extra $100 or so. It turns out the answer might be to shove a screen on it. Ain't that always the way?

That's what you will find on the Genki Manta, a new controller live on Kickstarter. It uses Manta OS, which is Genki's own operating system, and if you're wondering why a controller would even need an operating system, Genki notes that this allows on-the-fly fine-tuning without the need for any extra devices. You can customise its tri-stage triggers, adjust dead zones, change haptic feedback, and more via the onboard screen and OS.

And the controller is pretty impressive even outside the whole 'OS and built-in screen' thing. You get up to 8,000 Hz polling while wired (though only 1,000 Hz via 2.4 GHz wireless), a range of over 10 meters, 150 hours of battery via Bluetooth LE 6, as well as TMR joysticks and Hall effect triggers. The 16 MB of internal storage can be used to load apps onto Manta OS, and expandable storage might be offered as a stretch goal, according to Genki.

Normally I'm pretty cynical about Kickstarter projects, but the LA-based Human Things and its range of Genki products have been successful on Kickstarter for some time. In fact, I got a Genki dock a couple of years ago and was impressed with the performance. That's not to say the Genki Manta will necessarily be the same quality, but the company has a history of successful kickstarters.

Genki says the Manta is "Beyond the Pro Controller" on its Kickstarter, and it has many of the features one would expect from a pro controller, like four paddles on the bottom and two extra buttons next to the bumpers. Naturally, all of these are remappable via the controller's software.

One thing that does intrigue me about the screen and OS combo is that the controller can swap to keyboard and mouse controls. It even has a toggle on the pad to swap between controller and keyboard mode. It's not yet clear if the display is a touch screen, or how Genki anticipates players using the controller to navigate a mouse.

Whether or not it can balance the screen and extra buttons in its 280-290 g (around the weight of the Xbox Series X controller) frame will be anyone's guess, and naturally that software will have to be very smooth to be worth the effort. I am, however, quite intrigued by the controller, and I'm still deciding if it's curiosity or morbid curiosity.

We don't yet have an estimated shipping date (assuming the Kickstarter is successful), but we do have a price point: $189 for the Super Early Bird pricer and $279 for the retail price. That is a lot of money, and our pick for the best high-end controller right now, the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro 8K PC, is $200 at retail. The Wolverine also offers TMR thumbsticks and Hall effect triggers, though you are getting a superior 8,000 Hz polling via wireless, and we can guarantee the build quality of the Wolverine, as we've actually had it in our hands.

This is all before mentioning that you can get a controller for $70 (like the Gamesir G7 Pro) that competes with pro controllers in build quality and the featureset department. Even the more expensive Gamesir G7 Pro 8K (at $80) is a decent choice if you really want 8,000 Hz polling.

This is to say that, even with its own OS and a 2.79-inch screen, the Genki Manta has its work cut out for it. It's a big swing for a first controller, but we'll have to get our hands on it to see if it's actually worth that hefty asking price.

The next time you spot someone earnestly fiddling with a DSLR camera at an event, sneak up behind them and take a look at what's going on onscreen. They could be deep in the settings menus—or potentially, blasting through a demon horde in Doom.

Yes, it's time to chalk another device up on the "anything can play Doom if you try hard enough" board (via Tom's Hardware). Github user Lauris-nl has built a module capable of running the game inside the open source Magic Lantern firmware, which in turn runs on the Canon EOS 550D digital SLR camera.

The camera itself is an older model, originally released in 2010 and sometimes known as the Rebel T2i. The image processing hardware inside is apparently powerful enough to run Doom at a smooth frame rate, while the image adjustment and menu controls have been co-opted into what looks like a very playable configuration.

You get your traditional up, down, left, and right buttons on the radial controls, while the Set button handles "select" and "fire" duties. You can also use the Menu button to, you guessed it, open the menu. It's like DSLR cameras were built for this.

Okay, maybe not quite. Lauris-nl says the port is not intended for other cameras, and warns against installing it on any other model, or using Canon firmware other than the 1.0.9 version—lest terrible things happen to your expensive photography machine.

Still, if you happen to have one knocking around (there must be some DSLR collectors reading), you'll need to transfer a Magic Lantern 550D.109 build to an SD card, copy in the Github-provided module, and then paste compatible Doom .wad files into a custom folder.

The Github page doesn't feature any commercial Doom files, of course—although Lauris-nl suggests that Doom, Doom II, and Final Doom: TNT Evilution (among others) will work. Alas, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, and Doom64 are unsupported.

Still, the original Doom games are some of the best ever made (fight me), so I reckon there's more than enough to go on here. Plus, this would make for a perfect covert gaming device at boring weddings.

Sorry hun, I can't talk to the groom's father right now. I'm going through the photos and I can't get past this clutch of cacodemons. Go on without me, would you?

I'm trying not to be too down on the new(ish) AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D. After all, we are living in a time when the regular narrative is that all hardware is brutally overpriced and every tech company out there is trying to make a quick buck off the back of an AI bubble that is ever more certain to wipe out the global economy in one big pop. But here's AMD trying to give us an even more affordable AM5 gaming processor with a lovely dollop of the 3D V-Cache good-stuff. And yet I'm still not happy.

I guess, fundamentally, I don't get it. You see, what we have here is a slightly slower Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU with slightly lower MSRP. On the surface, that sounds great. The 7800X3D was the best gaming CPU of its generation, and only dropped off our recommended list when its Zen 5 replacement, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, dropped in price.

The issue is that the 7800X3D is old now. I reviewed it—very favourably I might add—back in April 2023. That in itself is not an issue; the underlying silicon is still excellent and still performs fantastically well up against the latest from either AMD or rivals Intel. The issue is that it's been out in the market a long while, most enthusiasts have their eyes on that 9800X3D (or even its slight upgrade, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D), and the ol' 7800X3D still has plenty of numbers out in retail, too. For essentially the same price as this 'new' 7700X3D. Sometimes cheaper.

And therein lies the friction. Why isn't AMD just making more 7800X3D chips and giving them a permanent price cut? Does it really have so many 3D V-Cache'd Zen 4 CCDs lying around—that couldn't quite get to the right clock speeds—that the only way to ship them would be to have them clocked lower out of the gate under a different chip name? And if so, wouldn't you rather spend the same money on the older, slightly faster, theoretically more reliable, CPU?

I kinda feel like I would.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D features

If you remember the old Ryzen 7 7800X3D, then you know exactly what we're talking about here, because this is essentially the exact same silicon, except this time clocked a little lower out of the box.

That headline difference translates to a base clock of 4 GHz for the 7700X3D and 4.2 GHz for the 7800X3D, and then a boost clock of 4.5 GHz versus 5 GHz. That's where the differences begin and end, even when we're taking pricing into consideration, too. The starting price for the 7700X3D is $329, but while the 7800X3D launched with a $450 MSRP that's not its cost right now. There are so many of the excellent old chippies out in retail that the price for a 7800X3D on Amazon right now is just $334; just $5 more than this new budget option.

Otherwise, we're still talking about a Zen 4 CPU, using a single eight-core, 16-thread CCD with a 64 MB dollop of 3D V-Cache slapped on top of it. That layering, and the insulating nature of having some extra silicon sitting between the CPU cores and the CPU cooler, means the Zen 4 iteration of 3D V-Cache necessitated a drop in clock speed. This is why the 7700X3D has a boost clock of 4.5 GHz while the 7700X, with no extra L3 cache, has a maximum boost clock of 5.4 GHz.

Zen 4 itself was, in large part, a respin of the Zen 3 architecture, but with the CCD built on a TSMC 5 nm production process and the IOD on a 6 nm one. It was also AMD's first native PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 platform, too. It got a little more cache, and with the X3D chips a lot more cache. Though the essential design remained more or less unchanged compared with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D which kicked it all off.

The difference between the Zen X3D chips and the Zen 5 X3D chips, however, is in where the extra cache sits. The likes of the 9800X3D and 9850X3D don't have to compromise on clock speed because the 3D V-Cache layer sits beneath the CCD instead of between it and the cooler.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D performance

You will probably not be surprised to hear the performance you should expect to see from the Ryzen 7 7700X3D isn't a big surprise. This is, after all, an eight-core Zen 4 chip with an extra 64 MB of L3 cache bolted onto it. Just like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. So yes, gaming performance and productivity metrics are pretty damned similar.

There are some differences, though those are minimal and largely down to either the slight difference in clock speed out of the box or simple testing variance.

When it comes to gaming you're looking at 1080p performance that is around 94-95% that of the top of the class, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D of Zen 5 fame, and that means frame rates at the same sort of levels as the 7800X3D. Which, in short, means you're getting excellent gaming performance from this affordable CPU, even if it's not performance we haven't seen before.

Previous

1 / 2

Next

1080p gaming performance

We test games at 1080p to ensure variance between CPU performance is captured

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra + DLSS Balanced)Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra)Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic)Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (1080p High)Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

112

73

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

120

88

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

107

79

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

118

93

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

112

76

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra + DLSS Balanced) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	112 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	120 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	107 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	118 Avg FPS, 93 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	112 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

122

52

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

118

77

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

88

61

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

109

67

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

146

76

Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	122 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	118 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	88 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	109 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	146 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

104

56

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

101

56

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

74

40

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

98

56

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

117

55

Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	104 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	101 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	74 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	98 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	117 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

148

78

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

150

86

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

147

74

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

145

79

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

148

91

Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	148 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	150 Avg FPS, 86 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	147 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	145 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	148 Avg FPS, 91 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

152

77

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

159

127

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

156

124

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

174

141

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

152

79

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	152 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	159 Avg FPS, 127 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	156 Avg FPS, 124 1% Low FPS
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	174 Avg FPS, 141 1% Low FPS
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	152 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS

You can see the benefits of the 3D V-Cache chips in games versus the higher-clocked 7700X without it, but also just how close the 7800X3D and the 7700X3D are in frame rate terms.

Synthetic gaming performance

We run the industry standard 3DMark test to get a guage of general gaming CPU performance

3DMark Time Spy

CPU index score

Overall index score

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

12848

16435

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

13078

16521

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

13869

16670

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

19987

17567

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

16116

17052

3DMark Time Spy Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	12848 CPU index score, 16435 Overall index score
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	13078 CPU index score, 16521 Overall index score
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	13869 CPU index score, 16670 Overall index score
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	19987 CPU index score, 17567 Overall index score
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	16116 CPU index score, 17052 Overall index score

The extra multi-threaded chops of the Intel chip are starkly highlighted here, even if they don't necessarily make a huge difference in games.

The benefits of the 3D V-Cache lump bonded to the 7700X3D's CCD, however, are most clearly demonstrated by the differences in gaming performance between this newer chip and the older Ryzen 7 7700X.

Just take a look at the frame rate delta between those chips in the particularly cache-sensitive Homeworld 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 benchmarks. The straight 7700X, despite its considerably higher clock speed, is considerably slower than X3D model. An easy example of where fighting over a couple hundred megahertz isn't a battle that PC gamers really need to get into.

Compute performance

We may be PC Gamer, but we also want to know how our CPUs perform in general compute tasks, too

Cinebench 2024Blender 4.2.07zipHandbrake 1.8.1

Single-core index score

Multi-core index score

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

102

1011

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

113

1082

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

118

1104

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

138

1817

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

133

1307

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	102 Single-core index score, 1011 Multi-core index score
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	113 Single-core index score, 1082 Multi-core index score
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	118 Single-core index score, 1104 Multi-core index score
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	138 Single-core index score, 1817 Multi-core index score
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	133 Single-core index score, 1307 Multi-core index score

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

79

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

81

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

85

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

132

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

101

Blender 4.2.0 Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	79
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	81
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	85
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	132
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	101

Compressing (GIPS)

Decompressing (GIPS)

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

115

124

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

118

128

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

110

132

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

147

146

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

132

141

7zip Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	115 Compressing (GIPS), 124 Decompressing (GIPS)
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	118 Compressing (GIPS), 128 Decompressing (GIPS)
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	110 Compressing (GIPS), 132 Decompressing (GIPS)
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	147 Compressing (GIPS), 146 Decompressing (GIPS)
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	132 Compressing (GIPS), 141 Decompressing (GIPS)

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

70.8

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

76

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

79

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

101

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

92

Handbrake 1.8.1 Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	70.8
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	76
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	79
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	101
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	92

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus demonstrates that its compute performance is peak for a budget-oriented processor, offering more rounded compute levels than the gaming-focused X3D chips.

But if you're after a bit more than just gaming performance from your processor then there are other options you should be considering. Obviously it's a different platform, so if you're just talking about an upgrade to your existing AM5 system then it's not an easy option, but Intel's excellent Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is an outstanding budget processor.

Its eighteen cores of Arrow Lake processing power gives it the edge over all of AMD's eight-core, 16-thread chips when it comes to actual compute power. And it's none too shabby when it comes to the gaming performance in general, either. So, if you wanted something a bit more rounded than a pure-blood gaming chip, the Intel CPU is an outstanding option for just $200.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D thermals

Despite some Zen 4 CPUs being rather toastie when it comes to their cooling demands, the 7700X3D remains pretty chill, largely thanks to that slower clock speed. Because of that it's drawing less power from the PSU, with the chip pulling down almost half that of the straight 7700X during gaming workloads. As we've noted, that lower clock speed doesn't actually have a huge impact on its gaming performance, but does mean that you're only looking at around 61 °C on average in our looped Metro Exodus stress test.

Thermal and power performance

We use three looped runs of Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition to get a bead on sustained thermal and power draw

Gaming thermalsGaming power

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

61

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

64

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

69

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

57

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

51

020406080

Avg CPU temp (°C)

Gaming thermals Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	61
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	64
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	69
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	57
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	51

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

53

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

69

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

91

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

91

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

67

0255075100

Avg package power (W)

Gaming power Data

Product	Value
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D	53
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	69
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	91
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus	91
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	67

The 7700X3D ends up being one of the coolest chips in our test, and also the one that consumes the least power.

Referring back to the Intel option, however, and while that might be a power-sucking beast when it comes to compute-heavy workloads, it is one of the coolest-running of our tested chips here when it comes to gaming performance. You're looking at just 57 °C in our looped Metro Exodus stress test, even while drawing an average 91 W.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D value

Notions of value are a tricky thing to realise for the Ryzen 7 7700X3D. Kudos to AMD for releasing a similar CPU to the 7800X3D yet with a massively lower MSRP, but the realities of retail means that the two processors currently exist at effective price parity. The 7800X3D has been out for a long time now, has a lot of stock still in retail and is regularly discounted.

And while we have noted that higher clock speeds don't necessarily always translate into higher gaming performance, I would have more confidence in the established silicon of the 7800X3D, especially when I'm still uncertain over the provenance of the 7700X3D chips' CCDs.

Are they cores that couldn't hit 7800X3D clock speeds out of the factory and so had to be managed down? Else why not just make more 7800X3Ds? This is my conundrum, and why, if the prices are the same, I would spend the same money on the older, quicker chip.

But the DIY market is not the only market. So while there is price parity here at Amazon for chips purchased on their lonesome, there are other ways to access the CPU. We've seen some excellent 7700X3D chip/mobo/RAM bundles on Newegg that come in at a cheaper price than equivalent 7800X3D options, and I would not be surprised to see full system builds from PC makers coming in undercutting 7800X3D machines.

In that context, the value proposition of the 7700X3D is far more pronounced. The only fly in the AMD ointment here is that Intel's excellent Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is still just $200. That is a bargain price for a chip that is far better at productivity and gets mighty close when it comes to gaming performance, too.

Our Jacob got his hands on a Steam Frame back in November of last year, and came away raving about the wireless VR headset's capabilities. Since then, we've reported on numerous signals that the Frame is on its way—but some new leaked videos give the rest of us a closer look at the hardware itself.

The videos were apparently leaked as part of an Arm Steam Client update, and have since pulled by Valve (via SteamDeckHQ). However, X account Steam Hardware Updates has reposted them, and what they reveal looks to be a very cushy, premium-looking design.

In one, a model demonstrates the process of putting on the Frame and adjusting the headband, including swapping out the internal faceplate to accommodate a pair of glasses. The large, cushioned rear-plate looks very comfortable, and the overall design is remarkably less... nerdy, for want of a better word, than I expected.

This particular video ends with a sequence of models wearing the VR headset in several, completely wrong ways, including as a shoulder bag. Even I smiled. There's also another video showing how to link the Steam Frame with the Steam mobile app for sign-in authentication purposes.

The focus adjustment wheel is demonstrated in another clip, while a full unboxing video shows exactly what you get in the packaging. There's the headset itself, of course, two wireless controllers, a large USB dongle, a cable, and an instruction manual/warranty card that's immediately thrown out of shot.

The video also shows the pairing process for the controllers, while even more clips posted in a separate comment go through what appears to be a short Steam Machine linking tutorial.

Ordinarily I'd advise a pinch of salt regarding leaks like this, but these are so well-done, I'd say we're probably looking at the final product. Valve is unlikely to be pleased—but I have to say, as someone not particularly interested in VR, the videos have made me want to try one for myself.

As for when the Steam Frame might be released? There's no official date as of yet, but the timing of these leaks suggests it won't be too long. We were told the second half of 2026, and here we are towards the end of August with plenty to go on. I wasn't that fussed before, but now the hype is beginning to build? Yep, even this VR cynic is kind of curious.

If your games started unexpectedly crashing after getting a Windows update on or after August 11, you aren't alone. And Microsoft says it's looking into the problem. Microsoft reports the following "symptoms" popped up for "a limited number of games":

• The game application becomes unresponsive
• The game application closes without notice
• The error "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" is displayed
• The device restarting without warning

Microsoft has only confirmed crashes in Arc Raiders, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals so far, but you can send feedback to Microsoft with the Feedback Hub app if you've also found a game crashing since the update.

Microsoft says it is investigating to see if the latest Windows update is responsible. As of right now, the only client versions that have reported crashes are 25H2 and 24H2, so 26H1 is currently in the clear.

But Embark, the developer of Arc Raiders, claims on Discord that the “This is a crash related to the file inpoutx64.sys, which changed with the Windows update" (via Windows Latest).

If Embark is correct, it looks like you might have to wait until a future Windows update for this problem to be officially fixed. However, Embark notes that you can type ‘sc stop inpoutx64’ into Command Prompt, then type ‘sc delete inpoutx64’ and delete the inpoutx64.sys file from your drivers folder to fix the problem in the short term. We haven't personally tried this method as we haven't had any crashing issues, so do so at your own risk.

Update KB5121003, which is said to be the update responsible for the crashes, contains over 400 security updates, although it's not clear yet if changes related to these fixes are responsible for the issues..

Some users have also reported graphical corruption problems after the latest Windows update. One user on Reddit demonstrates problems in Valorant and Roblox using both a dedicated graphics card and an integrated graphics card. Some users report that uninstalling KB5121003 has fixed black screen problems.

If you have run into the problem and want to test rolling back your Windows version, you can do so by following the steps below:

• Search Windows Update on the Start tab
• Click on Update history
• Scroll down and click Uninstall updates
• Uninstall update KB5120708

We don't yet have a timeline for when we can expect a patch, but uninstalling the latest update may be a good workaround until then.

A cybersecurity advisory jointly authored by multiple US agencies, including the NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE, and EPA, warns the owners and operators of industrial facilities of an "active cyber threat" to Siemens S7 programmable logic controllers.

"The threat actors are conducting reconnaissance and capability development against US-based Siemens PLC installations using AI-generated exploitation scripts disguised as legitimate monitoring tools," says the advisory.

"The US critical infrastructure sectors most targeted by this threat activity include critical manufacturing, energy, water and wastewater, chemical, food and agriculture, and commercial facilities. This is not a theoretical risk—it is an active threat."

Essentially, it reads like a list of some of the most important infrastructure facilities behind the lives of the average US citizen (via The Register). The threat actors are said to be leveraging open source automation libraries to create custom tools that mimic existing monitoring solutions, which are capable of evading detection by security teams.

These tools and scripts are said to be conducting read/write operations on data blocks, "potentially for reconnaissance, capability testing, or pre-positioning for effects operations."

The advisory notes that the use of AI to generate exploits represents "an evolution in threat actor capabilities," and that it "dramatically [reduces] the technical expertise and time required to develop working ICS exploitation scripts and malicious tools."

The advisory also says that, as the Siemens S7 Series PLCs are used in other sectors, including the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), they could also be targeted. As for the potential damage that could be caused, the list is rather long.

The potential effects include the disruption of critical industry processes, increased safety incidents affecting personnel through the "manipulation of safety interlocks, emergency shutdown systems, or process parameters," equipment damage and extended operational downtime, the compromise of sensitive operational data, and "cascading impacts across interconnected systems affecting supply chains, dependent facilities, and integrated business operations."

All very bad things, I think you'll agree. As for what organisations can do about it, the advice includes multiple steps for detecting anomalies that may indicate a compromise, and a series of "hardening actions" involving firmware updates, patches, network segmentation, and more.

While the advisory doesn't attribute blame to any particular government or cybercriminal group, Cynthia Kaiser, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division (now the senior vice president of the Halcyon Ransom Research Center) has some thoughts related to recent water system cybersecurity breaches.

"This appears to be a continuation of the same suite of activity we suspect is affiliated with Iran targeting PLCs," said Kaiser, speaking to The Register. "Iran-affiliated actors and adversaries are actively targeting a wide swath of operational technology because these PLCs underpin essential health, safety, and critical infrastructure across society."

Regardless of the cause, it's rare to read an official US government cybersecurity advisory with a tone of such immediacy. In its conclusion, the report asserts that "organizations should treat this cybersecurity advisory with urgency." Gulp.

I'll tell you two facts about me. One, I use Firefox on a daily basis. And two, I've been continually impressed by GeForce Now, Nvidia's PC game streaming service that somehow works a whole lot better than you expect.

So it's a red letter day in my household, as Firefox has been added to the list of officially supported browsers. Andrew Fear, the director of GeForce Now, is quoted in the Mozilla announcement as saying:

"Firefox earned its place on our list of supported browsers by delivering the first-class experience GeForce Now players expect. We set a high bar for browser support, and we’re excited to welcome Firefox—giving millions of Firefox fans a new way to stream the games they love."

Mozilla describes gaming as "one of the web's toughest tests," confirming that behind today's announcement lies "months of collaboration and engineering" to bring the browser up to spec.

Chrome, Edge, Safari and Opera were already supported, but it seems to have taken some extra work to get Firefox up to speed. Still, Firefox users can now stream more than 2,000 games through their browser using the GeForce Now service.

I pitted an actual RTX 5080-equipped gaming PC against GFN's Ultimate tier service last year, and came away feeling like a bit of a dinosaur. I like my games to run locally (mainly out of principle), but I have to say, the experience was remarkably close.

I'm not ready to make the leap myself, but given the cost of a new rig these days, I imagine many of you might be considering GFN over spending some serious cash on an upgrade. If so, more browser options are nothing but a good thing, if you ask me. Oranges and greens, all working together in total harmony. Something like that, anyway.